The Vast Majority

One Trick President
Now that Healthcare.gov has been fixed (you heard that it's fixed, didn't you?), Obama and his media sycophants can pivot to the next issue: economic inequality. Which was his issue for the past five years as well. Yes, class warfare is back. 


Staked Out
“Now that the website is working for the vast majority of people,” Mr. Obama added, “we need to make sure that folks refocus on what’s at stake here, which is the capacity for you or your families to be able to have the security of decent health insurance at a reasonable cost through choice and competition on this marketplace, and tax credits that you may be eligible for that can save you hundreds of dollars in premium costs every month, potentially.” (NYT, 12/5/2013)

Who would not want health insurance that is subsidized by other people?


Only You
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one of Obamacare's architects and staunchest supporters, is also the only top congressional leader to exempt some of his staff from having to buy insurance through the law's new exchanges. (CNN.com, 12/4/2013)

Remember our last post? When we talked about the corruption surrounding Obamacare?


The Waiting
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed for reporters Monday that President Obama has yet to sign up for Obamacare, saying “I know he will and has said that he will… but I don’t have an update.”

When asked what the President was waiting for and whether the White House would announce when the President did sign up for Obamacare, Carney laughed uncomfortably and could only respond, “I’ll get back to you on that.” (Washington Free Beacon, 12/2/2013)

Actually, the truth is that Obama tried to sign up, but has been placed in one of those waiting queues...


Lesser
Most important, Mr. Dorn said, younger enrollees, who also tend to be less affluent, will receive tax subsidies. If premium prices spike, the government will absorb that cost, ensuring they do not flee the exchanges. (NYT, 12/5/2013)

So the young who are needed to enroll in Obamacare in great numbers to offset the high medical costs of the old and sickly will receive tax subsidies from the government to pay for their premiums...which are needed to offset the high medical costs of the old and sickly. Does any of this make sense to you?

Not to worry, if premiums go up the government will "absorb that cost." Government will absorb that cost in one of two ways: either through tax revenue collected from taxpayers or from the Magic Money Machine.


Entirely
A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “How could any president put his entire reputation on the line with a program and not be on the phone every day pushing people and making sure it will work? Do you know of any president who wouldn’t do that?” (Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 12/3/2013)

Certainly not George Bush and certainly not Bill Clinton. 


The Toker
More than 20 years after saying he "didn't inhale," Bill Clinton is setting the record straight about his youthful pot smoking. “I didn’t say I was holier than thou, I said I tried. I never denied that I used marijuana," Clinton told Fusion TV's Jorge Ramos in an interview aired Tuesday night.

Back in 1992, in the midst of his first presidential campaign, Clinton famously equivocated when asked about his drug use, saying that during his days as a Rhodes Scholar in England, "I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it, and didn’t inhale, and never tried it again." (Yahoo.com, 12/4/2013)

Permit RedStateVT to set the record straight:

Technically Clinton did not deny smoking dope (depending upon what the definition of "deny" is). 

He did, however, deny having an adulterous sexual relationship with an employee, a White House intern young enough to be his daughter. 


Imagined
Mr. Bush was more of a reader than many Americans imagined — he had reading contests with Karl Rove, his top political adviser, measured not just by the number of books finished, but the cumulative number of pages and even square inches of text. He was particularly drawn to Lincoln, reading 14 books about the Civil War president while in office. (NYT, 12/5/2013)

We are not sure what the average American thought about how many books George Bush read. The only thing we do know is that the Liberal media relentlessly depicted Bush as an intellectual lightweight. Bush who was America's first MBA president. 


Day in the Park
...Chicago parks workers, whose unfunded pension liability grew from $77 million in 2003 to $550 million in 2012, a 615 percent increase. (NYT, 12/5/2013)

Coverage shifts from Detroit to Chicago, now facing its own pension time bomb. What floored us here was the one-half billion dollar pension shortfall for park workers! Not for all Chicago public employees....for park workers alone! How many "park workers" can Chicago have? What kind of pension promises were made to them? One-half billion dollars...? We will say it again: this is what happens when Democrats buy votes from public sector unions. 

Let's Dish

Woebegone
The financial woes of Detroit, which last month became the nation’s largest city to file for bankruptcy protection, dwarf the financial issues here. But as Detroit makes its way through the federal court system, other cities, including Chicago, are wrestling with overwhelming pension liabilities that threaten to undermine their capacity to provide municipal services and secure their futures. (NYT, 8/5/2013)

Let's see...what do both Detroit and Chicago have in common? Yes, it's true that they are both cities, but that is not the answer we were looking for. If you said, however, that they are both cities that are financial basket cases and that have been run for decades by Democrats then you would be correct. Democrats see no connection whatsoever between their policies and financial ruin. 

We are not a big fan of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but - credit where it is due - at least he gets it:

But Mr. Emanuel has openly called for increasing retirement ages, raising workers’ contributions toward their own pensions and temporarily freezing inflation adjustments now paid to retirees, all of which amount, union leaders say, to benefit cuts. (NYT, 8/5/2013)


Interception
The Obama administration’s decision last week to close nearly two dozen diplomatic missions and issue a worldwide travel alert came after the United States intercepted electronic communications in which the head of Al Qaeda ordered the leader of the group’s affiliate in Yemen to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday, according to American officials. (NYT, 8/5/2013)

It has been a year since Obama ran for re-election proclaiming Al Qaeda was "on the run." Will the Legitimate Media now challenge him on this point? Of course they will not. Obama gets a pass, just as he got a pass on high unemployment, high gas prices, Solyndra, "saving" Detroit, golf, Benghazi and everything else. 


Stakeout
Michael R. Bloomberg has staked much of his reputation as the mayor of New York City on improving students’ test scores, and has trumpeted gains in math and reading as validation of his 12-year effort to remake the city’s schools.

But the mayor’s telling of history is poised to receive one of its most vigorous challenges yet on Wednesday, when New York State is expected to report drastic drops in student performance across the state because of a new set of tougher exams.

In New York City, the proportion of students deemed proficient in math and reading could decrease by as many as 30 percentage points, city officials said, threatening to hand Mr. Bloomberg a public relations problem five months before he is set to leave office.

Already, many of Mr. Bloomberg’s rivals — the teachers’ union, parent groups, and several of the Democratic candidates vying to succeed him — have begun to use the prospect of a steep drop in scores to call into question the mayor’s record on education.

The United Federation of Teachers on Friday released a 1,000-word memo, in part blaming Mr. Bloomberg for poor test results, saying he had not done enough to train teachers for the new standards, known as Common Core. (NYT, 8/4/2013)

We loved this one. We are no great fans of Bloomberg (either), but we give him credit for standing up to the teachers union. 

According to the union it is Bloomberg's fault that test scores for NYC students declined. It has nothing to do with teachers.

Why do young people so often fail to demonstrate accountability for their actions? Maybe THAT is what they are learning in school from teachers.


Quote of the Day
The second shortest distance in Washington now runs between an Obama speech and its empirical disproof. (Bret Stephens, WSJ, 8/5/2013)